Book Review: Knitter's #58 New Directions

Title: Knitter’s Magazine, #58, Spring 2000

(That's the second printing, which I don't physically own. Contents are the same; covers vary.)

Editor: Nancy Thomas

Publisher's web site: http://www.knittinguniverse.com/

Web site founded by the author commemorated on the cover: https://www.schoolhousepress.com/

Ravelry page showing pictures of the projects: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/knitters-magazine-58-spring-2000/patterns?show=&sort=favorites_

Date: 2000

Publisher: XRX

Length: 96 pages

Illustrations: full-color photographs, most by Alexis Xenakis

Quote: “Knit on, with confidence and hope, through all crises.”

The knitting world knew that Elizabeth Zimmermann, the Busy Knitter, was dying and would probably never read the memorial issue of the magazine she’d helped to launch. Nobody knew exactly when she’d go. Thanks to the timing of its publication, Issue #58 was the only one of the first hundred issues of Knitter’s to be printed with two different covers. The first run featured a cute red-haired model whose face graced several issues of Knitter’s, and several XRX / Golden Fleece books, around the turn of the century. Later issues featured a picture of Elizabeth Zimmermann.

At a time when the commercial media were blaring about women who sought “liberation” from traditional domestic crafts, most of all from knitting and embroidery, it was hard to find a knitter who was not influenced by Elizabeth Lloyd-Jones, Mrs. Arnold Zimmermann.

Other knitting designers active in the 1960s and 1970s accepted publishers’ assumption that knitters were interested only in patterns and didn’t need to know who designed them. Pattern books explained, in numbers as much as possible, how one particular project could be reproduced using one particular kind of yarn; they tended to warn against any deviation from the manufacturer’s pattern exactly as written, most especially against using any other kind of yarn. Patterns usually, although not always, mentioned the weight of the yarn originally used, but when editors would allow it, corporate sponsors preferred just to specify how many skeins of their yarn the pattern follower should buy. Some yarn manufacturers offered, for an extra price, a list of the yardage of each skein of their yarn so that, if they’d stopped manufacturing the yarn used in an older pattern, a storekeeper could sell a pattern follower a different brand of their yarn. How many yards of yarn went into a product was not information sponsors wanted knitters to have, nor how to adapt a pattern to a different type of project.

EZ (she preferred initials to surnames or given names alone, probably because her initials were so fortuitous) was one wool spinner, yarn seller, pattern designer, knitting teacher, and pattern book publisher who did choose to publish that information. In well-written, hand-typed newsletters that read like a friendly teacher’s class lectres, EZ explained how just about any pattern could be adapted to just about any purpose, with a little planning, minimal use of arithmetic, and reasonable communication with anyone for whom we intended to knit. (“First catch your nephew,” EZ cheerfully warned aunts.) Yes, some of the patterns that were printed in magazines, adapting traditional knitting techniques to the current fashions, were EZ’s. She’d sold the magazines the rights to the “step-by-step instructions for blind followers.” In her books she explained how knitters didn’t have to be “blind followers.” Four books she wrote and published herself, plus a posthumous collection, explained her rules for adapting any technique to almost any project.

By the 1970s EZ was  one of those active-grandparent-figures whom the young, officially in rebellion against our parents’ generation, considered cool. She wasn’t telling us how to get ahead in the great rat race of life, nor how to drop out altogether and become a hippie-drug-prostitute-welfare-cheat. She was showing us that it was possible to marry your partner in a small business and live contentedly ever after, never getting super-rich, always having fun, making enough profit from the small business to finance quirky handmade clothes and skiing vacations. How cool was that?

In 2000, just as the first baby-boomers came within sight of retirement age...it wasn’t as if we hadn’t known she was old and ill, but just seeing the banner, “remembers Elizabeth Zimmermann,” sent the whole “Knitting Universe” into mourning.

So although this issue, like the other 125 issues of Knitter’s, is “as good as a book,” it’s an oddly mixed book. Articles that were written before November 1999 show everyone having fun; perfect young faces radiate good health and optimism in colorful, whimsical knitwear; Carol LaBranche writes snappy, snarky reviews of all the new books. Articles written between November 1999 and March 2000 show everyone having lost a friend (featured designer Meg Swansen had lost her mother). Old black-and-white photos adorn memorial tributes. On one page a knitter mourns, “Where would we be without Elizabeth?” A few pages over, another knitter warbles, “Life is a wonderful blur of pets, bicycles and glorious yarn—who could ask for more?”

What were they doing with that glorious yarn? Among issues of Knitter’s edited by Nancy J. Thomas, this was one of the thinnest. The theme of “new directions,” women’s sweaters made by any technique but beginning at the waistband and working steadily up to the collar, had been planned and most of the patterns had been knitted before November 1999. The techniques shown can of course be used to make all kinds of things other than women’s sweaters, and I have so used them over these eighteen years, but only one complete non-sweater pattern is illustrated.

The patterns are grouped by the “new directions” in which they were knitted: one from cuff to cuff, four in patches of mitered rectangles, three diagonally from corners, three basics in garter stitch, one worked from the neck down, and two with odd-shaped pieces.

The three basic garter-stitch patterns are there for confused beginners. Two are classic side-to-side cardigans in medium and bulky yarns. One is a bulky, unflattering, unwearable vest made by tacking big Brownie Squares together. Technically the squares are modified into trapezoids, but that’s an effect beginners are apt to produce unintentionally in any case, so the distraction doesn’t signify. As a beginner I figured out, from previous experience sewing, that putting the wider ends of my unintentionally trapezoidal pieces together would give my Obviously Very First Sweater a better fit, too. (This is true for Brownie Squares-Turned-Trapezoids that reach from the wearer's shoulders to waist; for even bigger trapezoids, bottom lines around the hips or upper legs may be better.) And I also figured out that if I were going to wear anything that bulky I was going to want it to be a real winter garment, with sleeves. (Two more uneven trapezoids of garter stitch form baggy, unflattering sleeves for your Very First Brownie Squares Sweater—if you insist on making sweaters at the stage of knitting where your squares seem to want to come out trapezoids. There’s a lot to be said for the idea of knitting scarves and patches until you’ve got control of your increases or decreases, but I didn’t want to bother with a scarf or commit to a patchwork afghan, either, until I’d worked that first clunky sweater out of my system.)

But the other designs are interesting enough that I never felt cheated by having bought a magazine that wasted two whole pages on a Brownie Squares vest. Deborah Newton’s side-to-side pattern is a real classic; Knitter’s had published it before and agreed to reprint it to satisfy popular demand. Other projects that said “must knit now” to me were Edie Eckman’s “Elemental Miters” or “Op Art” afghan (I used about twenty scraps of yellow, orange, and tan yarn), Candace Eisner Strick’s “Mitered Mozart” jacket (I used just one multicolor yarn), Valentina Devine’s “Randomly Slanted” vest, Kennita Tully’s “Mediterranean Blues” jacket, Rick Mondragon’s “Sideways Impressionist” jacket. Still on my “to knit” list are versions of Lee Goss’s “Garter Blues” jacket and Gayle Roehm’s “Two-Way Ribbing” pullover.

I’m not thrilled by piecing together sweaters out of tiny mitered squares, myself—that seems more of an afghan technique—but, if you are, you must have this magazine or “book.” Even if you’re not, this is an informative pattern collection.

Knitter's is one of a very few magazines for which the prices on back issues tend to rise, which is why I've decided to blog about the extra issues I've accumulated as "books." Amazon isn't showing a current price for this one at all. I have sold thinner back issues of Knitter's than this one for $20 on E-Bay. I'm not currently finding this one on E-Bay or other sale sites. All I can say to online shoppers is: watch this space. Copies may become available for $5 again, or not.